Sunday, August 30, 2015

Red Sonja
has gained such popularity and wide recognition as one of the iconic female
comics character, that one almost tends to forget that she was created by Roy
Thomas (based on a character by Howard from a completely different timeline
from the Hyborean Age) as a worthy female rival for Conan, the Barbarian (Conan
the Barbarian #23). Since their first encounter in the besieged city of
Makkalet , and the first hints of erotic attraction in “Song of Red Sonja” (Conan the Barbarian #24), each time
the two hyborean legends meet is an event that truly merits celebration, as it
usually adds to both character’s personality.

Dynamite/Dark
Horse’s crossover Red / Sonja Conan is the second time such meeting that happens
in 2015 after the mini-series Conan / Red Sonja, by scribes Gail
Simone and Jim Zub, and superlative art and covers by Dan Panosian. Despite the
Simone byline, Conan / Red Sonja was the best Sonja comic book I’ve read in a
long time, with good writing, excellent storytelling, compelling visuals and a
coherent plot, although I would bet Simone’s writing input was greater on
issues #3-4 than in the first two, as those were the ones where shaky writing
was more in evidence (I could be proved wrong). Those failings were most
obvious in the erotic relationship between the two heroes, as the newly
liberated and retconned Sonja, deprived of her ‘problematic’ origin story that
filled any advance towards a relationship with a darkly erotic tension, left no
room for any kind of tension or uncertainty as to any carnal relation, cheapening
it. This also makes painfully obvious the infantile way intercourse was denied
twice, something that had some meaning when Sonja couldn’t mate unless defeated
in combat, but cannot be accepted in a book that (one would hope) is no longer
targeted at children. (By the way, another
such instance occurs in this first issue of the second mini-series.) Despite
such shortcomings, it was a gripping story, chronicling the feud between Conan,
Sonja and the wizard Toth-Amon and his cancerous blood-root, at several
(canonic) stages of their lives.

Red Sonja / Conan picks up some time after the events
narrated in the previous series, and once more introduces the blood-root which
one was led to believe to have been extirpated from the world. As a way to circumvent
that small obstacle, writer Victor Gischler (X-Men; Deadpool; Conan:
The Phantoms of the Black Coast) takes us through a nine-years flashback
to the Kothian city of Enshophur, there to meet Kal’ang, “a mage of middling powers, commanding little respect” but about to
get his hands on some of the genocidal blood-root seeds. Behind this far from
awe-inspiring mage is an enigmatic blind seer, clearly a creature of greater
power, cunning and, above all, intelligent dissimulation.

Then we’re brought
back to the present, when Kush and Stygia are about to go to war, mainly
because Kush’s king fears an attack from Stygia. It is no surprise then, to
find that Kal’ang is now a small Stygian king, still as little deserving of
respect as he was before. In fact, maybe less than before, as Conan at one time
refers to him as “some hedge wizard. You
know how it is with these Stygians… every upstart mage thinks he can conquer
the world”. What may come as more of a surprise, is that Kal’ang doesn’t want
that war… at least for the moment, a fact that subtly and cleverly draws the
reader attention to the same blind seer that continues to counsel the mage king,
hinting at a true puppeteer running the show unseen.

It is at
Kush’s king’s camp that Conan and Sonja meet again, both captaining a company
of mercenaries, both pushed to fight each other for general command unaware of
the identity of their opponent (not a very convincing premise logic-wise, but
military logic is not a strong-point of this book, as is shown by the simplest way
Sonja and Conan debate strategy over beers, and how Gischler seems to believe you
can prime an army for battle with a few minutes warning time). Obviously, they
don’t get to fight one another, instead teaming against some discontent
mercenaries, in an impressive demonstration of Roberto Castro’s ability to
portray fluidity of movement.

Although I’ve
enjoyed Castro’s (Lords of Mars; Lord of the Jungle) art, I still
found it to unequal in this book, ranging from the mediocre (a panel where
Sonja seems to have but one leg) to the excellent (as is the case in the
referred fight). He is particularly inspired when drawing Kal’ang, transmitting
visually the suave malfeasance and self-importance of the mage. And I
particularly enjoy the way he draws Conan, which makes me think of a mix of the
better parts of Windsor-Smith and Buscema. And he clearly knows how to draw
feminine anatomy, which is always a plus when working on a Sonja book.

Obviously, for the fans of the original Red
Sonja (such as myself), the insurmountable moment of estrangement comes when
Conan, about to engage in a deserved threesome with two buxom wenches, is
surprised by Sonja waiting in his bed. “You’re more woman than an entire harem
of those wenches”, he tells her.

Obviously,
before they can consummate their sensual yearning, they are attacked by two
demon-warriors sent by Kal’ang to kill Conan and Sonja in an attempt to stay
the imminent attack by the Kushian forces. The monster’s attack, repelled by
the lovers-to-be, prompt them to anticipate the attack on Stygia, setting the
cliffhanger for issue #2. And yet, one is left to wonder:

What would
happen if Conan and Sonja really did
it? If they really ever got to make love? I guess one will never know, for the
entire Universe seems to be conspiring against such an event. In commercial
terms, it would really be unwise, as we’ve learned from countless examples in
the past: Superman and Lois Lane, John Steed and Mrs. Peel… the endless teasing,
the eternal will-they-won’t-they? is a lot more rewarding than the one-time-only
emotional peak of fulfillment. However, when Sonja had her vow never to fuck
anyone who haven’t bested her in a fair fight, there was a meta-diegetic
rationale that helped suspend the reader’s disbelief as to all the extraneous
circumstances that went to prevent the carnal union. But now, in this pasteurized
version of Sonja (or Horny Sandra, like our friend TheMightyFlip so
appropriately termed her), one is ever aware of how ridiculous it is that every
event of relevance to the plot would happen precisely when Conan and Sonja are
about to engage in lovemaking, and even before they remove a single piece of
clothing (or armor). It’s as if one is thrown back to the times of the Hollywood
Hays code.

It feels a cheat, and lazy writing. Sonja now
can fuck (and in Simone’s version, fucks) anyone she chooses, and it has been
shown (at least in Conan / Red Sonja, repeatedly) that Sonja has no trouble
beating Conan with a sword, and yet… not with Conan. It seems contrived,
infantile and demeaning to the reader, who, one hopes, is long over the uproar
of seeing Dick Grayson and Starfire in bed in The New Titans #1 (1988).
It may be slim pickings, but it mars a little what otherwise is a promising
start to a potentially interesting mini-series.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Alea jacta est. With Swords of Sorrow #4 we reach 2/3 of
the planned run of the series, and the point of no return for whatever story
Gail Simone had in mind. Issue four is, indeed, the most momentous up to this moment,
not least of all, because it’s the only issue thus far where something happens. Which, with fifteen
books published, is a feat of abject proportions. It’s as if we’ve been
watching the piano player cracking his fingers for almost two hours before
flipping his coattails back and finally sitting down on his bench. However, what happens, and above all, how it happens, underscore the fragile
structure of the story and the poor talent of the musician.

I never saw
Simone as a good storyteller, but her performance on Swords of Sorrow is way
beneath amateurish: everything that happens, every slow step of story building,
happens by omniscient fiat of a deus ex machina
narrator. And the most baffling result of this is how passive all the main characters are.

Case in
point: Swords of Sorrow #4. After three books of banter and fighting
each other, our women warriors finally find the generals they were looking for
(Dejah Thoris, Red Sonja and Vampirella, as established in issue #3). How do
they do this? They ask Dracula, who knows “where
the portals are”. That simple. Obviously, it begs the question: if what’s
in stake is the existence of the Universe itself, and if Dracula has that kind
of knowledge, why isn’t he doing
something? Why will he leave the destiny of all existence in the hands of a
bunch of girls that, as the story thus far has shown us, are utterly incapable
of doing anything by themselves?

It may seem
as a harsh appreciation of the series up till now, but really, Simone and her
cronies haven’t shown us a single instance of relevant action by any of their
heroines. Truth be told, the case is almost the same towards her villains: both
the Traveller and The Prince do little else then sit and grumble and bemoan
their respective minions lack of results. This reduces all the action on the previously
published fourteen books to an unrewarding movement for movement’s sake.

And that,
to me, is quite jarring, for I still don’t understand what’s the point of all
this frenetic red queen(s) racing all over the place. According to the series’s
one-shot prequel, The Prince’s minions should prevent the Traveller’s minions
of perturbing the former’s ritual, a ritual that would hand him supreme power
over all of reality. However, the Prince does little more than sit in his
throne room “nowhen”, and one fails to see what kind of menace our girls may constitute
towards his plans. In reality if Purgatory, Mistress Hell, et al. weren’t constantly goading them on, or trying
to bribe them with promises of absolute power, Sonja, Thoris, Vampirella, etc…
wouldn’t have a fucking clue to what was going on, or where, or when. All the
heroines have done so far is being handled gifts and pushed through one portal
or another without reason or rhyme.

And with
the revelations operated on issues #3 and #4, where we learn the true identity
of The Traveler (the only genuine efficient moment in the series so far), it
becomes patently obvious how absurd the whole enterprise is. If The Traveler
knows the identity and whereabouts of The Prince, and despite being an entity
of extraordinary power, still needs generals and soldiers, why didn’t she tell
them who the adversary was, where he is, and what they had to do? Doesn’t seem to
me the brightest idea, on a countdown to annihilation (or “the end of days” as is put on the current issue), to let the foot-soldiers
to figure out for themselves what’s going on.

And that –
what’s going on – brings me to what I believe is the most incredible of plot
contrivances: the identity of the Prince himself. That he was Prince Charming
was not a red-herring, alas. And this attempt by Gail Simone to build up such
an innocuous fairy-tale character to the stature of Myth is the most ridiculous
bid for relevance I’ve read in recent times (maybe only the coup by J. Michael
Straczinski to make Wonder Woman his own in TheNew 52 comes close to it
in the 21st Century).

In a publicity
interview for the series, Gail Simone referred to Prince Charming as “a
character of legend (…) of massive power”, an idea that is hinted at at several
instances all through the books already published, infusing the reader with the
notion that Prince Charming is a being with the grandeur beyond that of a
Galactus. But how to support such a proposition? Former reporter Lucy Freeman
and psychotherapist Kerstin Kupfermann (who has worked of famous Freudian fairy-tales
specialist Bruno Bettelheim, much in
at the time of writing) write in their book The Power of Fantasy
(Continuum, New York, 1988), that what they call the “Prince Charming” Fantasy is, in essence, the fantasy if
idealized perfect love, a fantasy that cannot stand the quotidian reality of a
longstanding relationship.Being a book
of Freudian bent, the authors cannot free themselves from the centrality of
oedipal interpretations, and thus, the Prince Charming fantasy is one of
longing for maternal love. However, its nuclear tenet is very close to Simone’s
view: “Seeing a wife of several weeks in
hair curlers or brushing her teeth may fill a husband with disgust. Watching
her husband clip his toenails or hearing him pass gas in the bathroom may bring
feelings of revulsion to a bride” (p.62). Snow White was not repulsed by
Prince Charming passing gas, but by him deriving joy on revenge for what was
done to her. For “Snow White was of kind heart, and could not
bear to see his cruelty, even to the witch”, Simone tells us, through The
Traveller. In this, if the extrapolation is allowed, we can see a mirror-image
of Simone retconning Sonja’s origin, so as
to wipe out rape. In both instances, Snow White’s and Simone’s, there seems to
be a disgust in dealing with reality, an attempt to stay in an idealized infant
state. For a rabid feminist writer, it must be close to anathema the thought
that a raped woman could gain power, strength and wisdom from her ordeal. That
she could transcend such an ordeal. That she wouldn’t be forever defined by it
as a victim.

So now
consider the motivation of the character. Disgusted by Prince Charming’s revenge
(to burn the witch’s feet with molten lead shoes, as in Grimm’s original
telling of the story), Snow White leaves him, and, in return, he intends to
destroy the Universe. For want of a good fuck, all the universe was lost… But
then again, consider: if Prince Charming has the power to open rips in Time, of
manipulating the Universe at a quantical level, couldn’t he just travel back in
Time and undo his revenge? Could he not seek redemption through other means and
so regain his lost love (although I bet something like that will happen in the
end)? And really, what kind of immature man cannot abide to lose a loved one
and go on with his life?

Anyhow,
back to Prince Charming as figure of Myth. Feminist scholar Catherine Orenstein
has this to say about him in her book Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex,
Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale (Basic Books, New York,
2002): “It’s no secret that today’s
best-known fairy-tale protagonists are female: Cinderella, Snow White,
Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Red Riding Hood, to name just a few. These
heroines act amongst a cast of banal male foils. The men are simply fathers,
beasts, dwarfs or princes, all interchangeable and usually illustrated as one
and the same from tale to tale. In Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical Into
the Woods, the Prince Charmings of two interwoven
fairy tales swap places without so much as a ripple in the plot” (p.121). That’s because Prince Charming has no relevant
role to play in these tales, whose center belong entirely to women. “In these fairy tales, the heroines make
decisions that illustrate the expectations of women in real life, while the
male figures are simply metaphors for punishment (misbehave and you’ll meet a
wolf) and reward (a prince in the end – if you’re good!)” (idem).

So what
Simone is doing here, is creating a big paper tiger that her female heroines
can disintegrate with their magic swords, as if in a pajama party for women that
refuse to grow up (and how apt it suddenly feels to have Sonja revert once more
to the Simone-simpleton that refers to herself in the third person and looks as
dim as a burnt bulb). I was enveloped on the above musings (I admit, a little collateral
to the review at hand) when in the double spread by the end of the book, where
all the heroines are amassed against Mistress Hel, I got a sad glimpse of how
Simone and her readers may see the world (or may fantasize the world as it
should be).

This kind of setup is recurrent in comic-books,
and frequent in comics featuring teams of Superheroes, be they The Avengers vs
The Masters of Evil, The X-Men vs The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants or The
Superman Family vs The Marvel Family, but never that I recall had I seen before
such a setup comprised of men only. But here, in the dark tones of a cold
night, sixteen women face a rival woman for the destiny of the Universe menaced
by one of only four men in the entire story-arc (Dracula, the Courier, the
savage boy Jana and Sonja meet, and Prince Charming himself). For a moment I
saw this image encapsulated the entire agenda of Swords of Sorrow; that
Simone was sex-reversing what she saw in comics: a male medium, populated by
male characters, aimed at male readers. Perhaps an apt comment on the industry, as she is fond to refer to
comic book publishers. But then it hit me: this could not be, as comics have
always been a brewing pot for strong women characters, from Wonder Woman and Red
Sonja, to Jean Grey and the White Queen. Nor forgetting Supergirl, Catwoman,
Black Cat, Batgirl, Mary Marvel, and so many more that made my delight as a boy.
So it is not the sad way they see the world. It’s the way their feminist agenda
wants the world to be: a place that excludes man, that sees no place for man
but as tyrants and world-killers. And if the first was a grey perspective
indeed, this one made me realize how really really SAD their world is.

Monday, August 24, 2015

So, last
time we saw Red Sonja and Dejah Thoris (Swords of Sorrow #2), they were
about to embark on a quest to find the part responsible for the puffing out of
entire constellations and the sudden creation of rips across time and
dimensions. It was a rousing moment, with a determined Sonja challenging the
Universe and Thoris: “You said it wasn’t
natural. Someone planned this. Fine. So, god or demon, man or beast… I’m going
to find it and cut its god-cursed head off. You coming?”

However one
takes such a scene – whooping gung-ho enthusiasm or with a grain of salt as to how will she find said planner across
time and space, having not a clue to who or what it is, nor the resources it
can amass – one thing you’re surenot
expecting: that the challenge won’t be accepted. After all, it was Dejah Thoris
who spotted the problem, was she not?

And so, it
came as a complete surprise to me, on opening issue #1 of Swords of Sorrow: Red Sonja &
Jungle Girl, to find Sonja, alone, wandering the dry deserts of Barsoom,
in search of the portal Dejah Thoris had seen from afar.I had been so certain that both Sonja and
Thoris had plunged together into the portal, there to become somehow separated
in time and space, that the complete absurdness of it all took some time to
register. “The princess had to return to
her city and her people, but I was made for a business messier than Martian
politics”, Sonja tells us, as written by Marguerite Bennett. I could not
believe my eyes, so I reached for Swords of Sorrow: Dejah Thoris & Irene
Adler #1 (written by Leah Moore, with art by Francesco Manna), as yet
unread, and, lo and behold, there she is, Dejah Thoris, in her luxurious bed in
the Royal Palace of Helium, admiring the strange dark blade given to her by the
Courier and musing to her dog Woola about how such a blade “surely brings only suffering”.

The most
jarring thing to me was not the return of Thoris to Helium per se, as it is a lot more logic than the gung ho attitude of
Sonja as portrayed by Gail Simone in issue #2 (a clichéd comic book moment, but
an expedient one story-wise). However, with four issues of Swords of Sorrow out now
(three by the time Red Sonja & Jungle Girl #1 came out), the ancillary titles
almost complete, the story is going nowhere. There’s nothing of significance happening, only an event
after another that add to nothing, and add nothing to the story, flimsy as it
is. One cannot shake off the impression I mentioned before of reading snapshots
of story instead of a coherent narrative.

And so it
is with Swords of Sorrow: Red Sonja & Jungle Girl #1. Three entire
pages are needed to take Sonja from Mars to Jana’s pre-historic Island, than
another seven to go through the motions (already seen when Sonja first met with
Dejah Thoris) of meeting Jana, the Jungle Girl, and fighting her, before both
realize they are really allies. (Just a brief side note here to muse on how
Sonja, the fiercest warrior out of Hyrkania and a true she-devil with a sword –
soldier, thief, mercenary – can’t quickly dispatch a Barsoomian noblewoman or a
primitive jungle girl in a fight. Oh, well….) And then, two more pages are
needed to introduce the first element of possible relevance to the plot: the
strange freeze affecting portions of the lush tropical jungle.

On the
margins we lose track of the orluk
that attacked Sonja on Mars and crossed with her to Jana’s island (never mind
how the two got separated on the trip), and are deprived of any sense of
suspense by a glimpse of Mistress Hel peeping through the vegetation at Sonja
and Jana, like the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden, although she waits
six more pages before revealing herself. In those six pages, Sonja and Jana see
a deer being slaughtered by three winged demons, find an injured savage boy
that is apparently responsible by the freeze and becomes their ally, and are attacked
by said demons who then are shattered to ice crystals by the boy.

One thing
the readers immediately notices is the weird banter between the two main
protagonists, as if they’ve just came out of a Winx cartoon TV marathon. Although I, for once, find it refreshing
to read once more some Sonja interjections of the kind “Mitra’s Balls!” or “Derketo’s
Tits!” that bring a very welcome Roy Thomas & Frank Thorne vibe.
However, there’s no way in hell that one would ever swallow Sonja answering on
being called a witch by Jana: “‘Witch’,
really? She-devil, sword mistress, queen of malice and scourge of maleficence,
you could’ve said…” and then adding with a schoolyard degree of rhetoric, “and I could call you a sneaking vicious
slat-ribbed giglet!” When Jana retorts “Heh,
joke’s on you… I don’t know what that word means!” one’s left to ponder how
infantile can you go before the joke’s on you.

And it sure
is a minor quibble, but does it make any sense, when it was established that
the swords allow them to “understand each other’s languages” (Swords
of Sorrow #2)? That is not the only instance in this book when the
issue of language is referred to, for on the immediate page Sonja has similar
musings on how can a tatterdemalion like Jana speak good honest Hyrkanian, to
which Jungle Girl responds with “I don’t
know what either of those words mean, either”. Minor quibble it sure is, although it
squanders practically a full page that could be put to good use advancing the
story. If there really is a story to be told, as at this point, one is not assured
of it.

Another not
so minor quibble has to do with another instance of poor coordination between
Simone and her hand-picked female writers. I’ve already mentioned the
by-the-numbers encounter between Sonja and Jana, with both attacking
each-other. But then, after a double spread of sexy catfighting, Jana says “I was warned against your coming, trusted
with a sacred spear…” It needn’t be said that when the Courier offered Jana
her double-bladed weapon (Swords of Sorrow #1) we heard no
such warning; but if she was warned, why, oh why, would she attack Sonja? And why
was Sonja not given a similar warning? (The situation is once more repeated,
almost verbatim, in the Swords of Sorrow: Black Sparrow & Lady
Zorro one-shot). This kind of lazy writing (and lazier plotting) is
almost mandatory by the lack of capable overall storytelling that should have
been secured by Simone.

However, despite all these shortcomings, it is
not as big a pain to read as the main books of the series (penned by Simone). Bennett’s
writing, episodic structure not-withstanding, is brisk and clean, and the art
and colors by Mirka Andolfo bring the book two or three notches above Dávila’s
inks in Swords of Sorrow. The colors are pale (I would enjoy a little
more vibrancy in the depiction of the tropical jungle and sea) yet adequate,
and the drawings are strangely enticing, despite its juvenile lines. The
characters are drawn with somewhat disproportionate eyes (a clear neotenic indication
of juvenilia) and under-proportioned noses, which brews a heady mix with the full
grown breasts and lithe bodies of both girls. The pages flow with elegant
action in the fight scenes, and the small panels cramped by the above the
shoulders views from both girls add nice introspective nuances to the emotional
flux.

It would be nice to see this young Italian artist secure at leat a
six-issues run on Red Sonja: She-Devil with a Sword after Simone has left the
title. Or, at least, a couple of one-shots. For me, at least, Andolfo’s art
will be the main attraction for Swords of Sorrow: Red Sonja & Jungle
Girl #2.